We’ve Moved

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Brick Factory, a Washington, DC-based digital agency founded by former employees of The Bivings Group. You can read the details of the transition here.

As a result of the change, The Bivings Report will no longer be updated, although we intend to keep the site up as an archive of the great content that has been produced over the years.  To read new entries, please check out the Brick Factory blog, Brick by Brick.

Five Fundraising Tips from the charity:water September Campaign

From a fundraising perspective, one of the great successes of the last few years has been charity: water.  In five years the organization has evolved from a lean startup charity into a fundraising juggernaut that has raised millions online and provided potable water to an estimated two million people. 

The organization just rolled out its annual September campaign, which is their big fundraising push each year.  While charity: water clearly has more resources at its disposal than the average non-profit at this point, the fundamental set up of the campaign is something that any organization should be able to replicate. 

(1) Set a goal and a timeline.

The goal of this year’s September campaign is to raise $1,200,000 by the end of September.  On their site they include a real-time counter showing their progress in the campaign.

Setting clear goals like this and showing progress helps to make donors feel invested in the campaign and creates a sense of community.

Continue reading “Five Fundraising Tips from the charity:water September Campaign” »

Mighty Bell Launches

Bianchini Launches Mightybell To Harness The Power Of Baby Steps

Mightybell looks like a really intriguing new online service, and given the team behind it will definitely be worth watching.  Beyond the obvious self help style applications, I could see political and public affairs organizations using the service to help educate about issues or mobilize supporters to a campaign or cause. 

ESPN Ups Its Mobile Game

As a sports fan and iPhone user, one of the sites I frequently access on my phone is ESPN.com.  ESPN recently launched a new mobile site for iPhones, which is more robust and app-like than just about any mobile site I’ve seen.  As a reference point, below are screenshots of the ESPN mobile site in 2008 and today.

While they may not look that different superficially, the site today is much more sophisticated and user friendly than it was in 2008.  It is all about the details:

• The new ESPN mobile site has become much more video-focused the last few years.  As you browse the site just about every section has the option to play video on your phone.
• In 2008, the ESPN site just featured one top story.  Now the mobile site has a Top Story slider that allows you to cycle through articles in a manner similar to the experience on www.espn.com. 
• The mobile sites navigation system has been optimized to work really well for touch screens.  In 2008 it was a bit mysterious.
• The search is featured prominently on the site today, and the results you get when searching by topic focus on delivering the most timely information first.
• The MyESPN area allows you to customize the headlines you see by team/sport, allowing easy access to the topics you care about.

ESPN has worked hard to create a thoughtful mobile experience that focuses on getting users to the content they need without any tension.  For me, the simplicity and focus on content of the ESPN mobile site is a not reprieve from the clutter that you find on ESPN.com and other news sites. 

The Official YouTube Creator’s Playbook

Although this clocks in at 70 slides,  if you only read and apply the first 30 slides your YouTube channel will be better than most. Indeed rather than producing something overly complex with tons of fancy buzzwords YouTube has put together a fairly concise (and free) outline of how to best utilize the platform. So will this put amateur YouTube ‘mavens’ ‘evangelists’ and other ‘ninjas’ out of business? Perhaps we can only hope, but as General Patton said, having proper instruction (or orders) is only worth 10%:

“The remaining 90 percent consists in assuring proper and vigorous execution of the order.”

While most of the suggestions here are indeed relatively straightforward, if you have not tried to set up annotations or design a custom background before, it is advisable to at least set up a testing account before making modifications to your organization’s official channel. Sometimes it can also be hard for subject matter experts in their own fields to take a step back and think about how their target audience, and the general public at large views their content. In this respect, retaining the services of qualified advisors can help in adding perspective.